


a myth

by quibbler



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2113224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quibbler/pseuds/quibbler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the 2012 <a href="http://kolms.livejournal.com/19212.html">welcome home ficathion</a>, un-betaed. JK Rowling owns everything!</p>
    </blockquote>





	a myth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 [welcome home ficathion](http://kolms.livejournal.com/19212.html), un-betaed. JK Rowling owns everything!

_A long time ago in the kingdom of Aethiopia, there lived a princess named Andromeda. Her mother, the Queen Cassiopeia, made a hubris-ridden boast that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, the sea-nymphs who accompanied Poseidon. Enraged, the god of the sea produced a sea monster named Cetus to ravage Aethiopia's coast where dwelled the kingdom of the vain Queen. King Cepheus, desperate to save his people, begged the Oracle of Apollo for a way to rid his kingdom of the beast. The Oracle announced 'no respite will be found unless the greatest of sacrifices is made to appease the angry God. Your flesh and blood, your daughter.' Though the king wept, he had no choice and chained Andromeda naked to a rock along the coast._

She leads two lives. One where she plays a prodigal daughter, upholding the family values so she doesn't upset her parents--they raised her and she will love them even if she hates who they have become. The other where she breaks free of the gilded cage, the twisted black metal beneath shattering beneath her wings. The rule is that they must never cross and she abides by this mantra. She hides it so well that she wonders if luck isn't just a figment of the human imagination until one day she sees Bellatrix standing in her bedroom, her eyes accusing and filled with the fury that Andromeda was so used to seeing.

 _The disappointment, the shame_ , the words echo in her mind. She hears them too often and she knows they will fall from her sister's lips as she brandishes the letter in Ted's sloppy script. She erases the emotion from her face as she was trained to do through childhood, erases the need to feel loved by her older sister--Bellatrix had always favoured Narcissa, but Andromeda carried the secret pride that her younger sister preferred her company, not that of the eldest. Andromeda listens and doesn't speak until she hears the word Mudblood.

Her eyes narrow and for a moment, Bella looks proud of herself for goading her sister into showing her true emotions. Andromeda, the best actress the House of Black has ever seen. "If you _ever_ ," she says, her voice pitched half an octave lower than usual, "threaten him again, I will personally take care of your death."

The fear flits across her sister's face before being replaced by a sneer. "He is a sea monster, Andromeda, and he will destroy you."

The words worm their way into her heart and fester slowly, infecting her happiness. Ted is everything that she wants and then some, the beacon of light in a black world. He makes her laugh and she can forget even just for a moment that she is rooted in bigotry and corrupt politics. She shares his bed both at Hogwarts and at his house, his Muggle parents lovely and accommodating and more open-minded than she could ever imagine parents to be.

She rests her head against his chest and doesn't speak, only listens to his heartbeat slowing into a soothing rhythm, a _thump-thump_ that she wishes she could put to memory and write a symphony. His breathing evens out and she doesn't need to look at his face to see that he's asleep. She sighs as though the single breath could disperse her troubles and she wills herself not to cry. _Are you the sea monster, Ted? Are you the nightmares that keep me from sleep? Or are you Perseus, the son of a god, come to rescue me?_ She doesn't know if she whispers this words out loud but they make her head spin all the same and she falls into a fitful sleep.

Weeks, months pass before she realises it and he turns to her one night, his blue, blue eyes gleaming with hope--she nearly laughs at herself for imagining that hope exists, but when she's with him she thinks it does--and she drowns in them, she drowns in a sea every day with him. "I am your Perseus and I won't let them take you from me, Dromeda. I swear it."

_On his return journey from slaying the Gorgon Medusa, Perseus came upon the beautiful chained princess and in a fit of gallantry brought on by love, slew the beast in his gods' gifts. He set Andromeda free and married her._


End file.
